The invention relates to preventing unauthorized use of services and especially to preventing unauthorized use of the services in a mobile communication system.
Mobile communication systems were developed, because there was a need to allow people to move away from fixed telephone terminals without affecting their reachability. The services offered through mobile stations have developed along with the mobile communication systems. At the moment, various new forms of service are being planned for the current and particularly for the future third-generation mobile communication systems, such as Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) and International Mobile Telecommunication 2000 (IMT-2000). UMTS is being standardized by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute), whereas ITU (International Telecommunications Union) is standardizing the IMT-2000 system. These future systems are very similar in basic features. The following will describe in greater detail the IMT-2000 system whose architecture is illustrated in FIG. 1.
Like all mobile communication systems, IMT-2000 produces wireless data transmission services to mobile users. The system supports roaming, in other words, IMT-2000 users can be reached and they can make calls anywhere within the IMT-2000 system coverage area. IMT-2000 is expected to fulfil the need for a wide range of future services, such as virtual home environment (VHE). With the virtual home environment, an IMT-2000 user has access to the same services everywhere within the coverage area of the system. According to present knowledge, a flexible implementation of various services and especially supporting roaming requires the loading of certain service logics into the terminal of the user and/or the serving network. A serving network is the network through which the service provider offers his service to the end-user. A service logic is a program, partial program, script or applet related to the service. The service is generated by means of the service logic by executing at least the service logic and the functions defined in it. A service can also comprise several service logics.
A problem with the arrangement described above is that it does not in any way verify that the user really has the right to use the service. It is especially easy to copy and make unauthorized use of services in which the service logic is loaded into the terminal and/or serving network.
Thus, it is an object of the invention to develop a method and an apparatus implementing the method so as to solve the above-mentioned problem. The object of the invention is achieved by a method, a system, a network element and an apparatus characterized by what is stated in the independent claims. The term apparatus refers here to a network element of the serving network, a terminal or any other corresponding service platform, into which the service logic can be loaded. The preferred embodiments of the invention are set forth in the dependent claims.
The invention is based on the idea of forming a service logic of two parts: user authentication and the actual service logic. The data required for user authentication is appended to the service logic, and the user is always authenticated before executing the actual service logic. This provides the advantage that an unauthorized use and copying of the service logic can be prevented. Only the users, to whom the service is subscribed and who thus have the right to use the service, can use it.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the service provider is always verified before the service is executed. This improves considerably the security of the user and a possible service platform into which the service logic is loaded. This ensures that the service logic truly originates from the service provider.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, subscriber identification used to individualise a user is used in user authentication. This provides the advantage that subscriber authentication is simple, but reliable.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the service logic is saved with its user and authentication data in the memory of the service platform where it is loaded, and for a new user, only the authentication data of the new user is loaded. This provides the advantage that the service logic need not be loaded several times consecutively, which reduces the network load.